Controversy erupted recently about new funding arrangements announced
by the Canadian International Development Agency that would hook CIDA
up with the mining industry and have both channelling funds to South
America and Africa via a handful of international NGOs.

One of those projects connects CIDA, Barrick Gold, and World Vision in Peru.

But little coverage has focused on the real story behind this
‘development’ initiative targeting community members in the district of
Quiruvilca, north-west of the capital city of Lima.

Opposition to Barrick’s presence in the Quiruvilca district goes back
several years. For example, on Feb. 9, 2007 some 3,000 people
demonstrated against ongoing Barrick operations in the district.

Barrick is currently seeking to open a new open-pit mine in an area
known as Laguna Sur. In 2011 the company carried out 366 perforations in
a wet zone close to five small lakes that comprise a catchment area
providing clean water for some 8,000 farmers downstream.

In response to these developments the municipality of Santiago de
Chuco passed an ordinance in June 2011 providing for a conservation zone
for the catchment area. Barrick’s response to this ordinance was to
immediately contest it by appealing to the Third Constitutional Court in
Lima.

Opposition to Barrick’s presence in the Quiruvilca district is
mounting. On Feb. 3 a contingent of farmers and rural dwellers from the
district walked and caught rides covering a distance of 557 kilometres,
and arrived in Lima on Feb. 9 to join thousands of others from across
Peru in the National March for Water.

The demands of the national march included a new Peruvian mining law
to replace the one instituted by the corrupt Fujimori regime.
Quiruvilca-area farmers had their own chant prepared for the mega-march:
"Water is life, and we are going to defend our lakes."

Rights trump ‘development’

Having recently caught wind of the World Vision-led project to be
financed jointly by CIDA and Barrick Gold, Miguel Palacin, the general
co-ordinator of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations, sent
a strongly worded letter of concern to World Vision-Canada and Barrick
Gold headquarters in Toronto, as well as to International Co-operation
Minister Bev Oda.

Mr. Palacin represents a group that is the co-ordination nexus for
the indigenous organizations of Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru,
with a mandate to work to promote and defend the rights of indigenous
peoples internationally.

This letter, in part, makes the following points:

“Unfortunately, Canadian mining companies have a bad track record in
our [Southern] countries, where companies such as Barrick Gold are the
source of many conflicts because of the dispossession of lands,
destruction of water sources, and the ignoring of international rights
(ILO Convention 169, the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
among others), that lead to multiple environmental and social impacts
on our communities.

“The solution is not to mediate and negotiate based on what has
already been done, and no ‘social works’ carried out with the mining
companies can compensate for the damage done, particularly in the face
of rights having been violated.

“So for these reasons we ask that you, World Vision Canada/Barrick
Gold/CIDA, refuse to take any part in this development policy, and
instead that you take responsibility to ensure that Canadian companies
respect, and demand that States respect, the rights of the indigenous
peoples affected before anyone seeks mining concessions in our
countries.”

For this World Vision-led ‘development’ project to go ahead in the
district of Quiruvilca in the face of concerted opposition locally and
nationally would be tantamount to running a pacification program, and
not a development project, in advance of the eventual destruction of a
people’s way of life—all for gold.

As Mr. Palacin is strongly suggesting, World Vision-Canada should
focus its efforts on Canada. It should join with other organizations
working to bring about needed legislation at home to hold Canadian
mining companies responsible for damages done abroad.

World Vision-Canada would be welcome to participate in Walking the
Talk: Human Rights Abroad, a conference to be held on Parliament Hill on
March 16. It’s meant to be a multi-sectoral dialogue (including leaders
from the Global South) focusing on corporate practices abroad, and on
related international violations of human and environmental rights.

The conference is to discuss NDP MP Peter Julian’s private member’s
bill, C-323, which had first reading last fall. The bill would provide
international communities with the option to pursue legal recourse in
Canadian federal courts. It’s modelled on current US legislation known
as ATCA, the Aliens Tort Claims Act.

Rick Arnold was born in Venezuela. He has worked for a number of
Canadian international NGOs, and has just retired as co-ordinator for
Common Frontiers-Canada, a group that confronts, and proposes an
alternative to, the social, environmental, and economic effects of
economic integration in the Americas.